Asian Rosewoods - clarification?

[oatordeal]

hey tim, love the pics you posted. thanks

[Andromeda]

Originally Posted by Brent Nelson

I'd been kicking the tires on an Ayers (that I plan to review here shortly!!) via their three-week test drive deal that is sitka/Vietnamese rosewood. I've been told that its technical name is "dalbergia bariensis," and that it goes by Cambodian or Burmese Rosewood as well (I haven't researched any of this to verify). I really was planning on simply giving this a whirl via their test-drive deal and shipping it back, but this guitar impressed me enough that I added it to the stable. This particular model is "lattice" braced (which I believe all 5 and 8 series are), but they have several traditionally x-braced models as well. My experience with this tonewood has been pretty positive. I'll do a full review shortly.

O my gosh that is beautiful looking wood!!!

[Tim McKnight]

Originally Posted by oatordeal

hey tim, love the pics you posted. thanks

Thanks Nims

[Jim]

Originally Posted by stratokatsu

Considering some inexpensive guitars like the Silver Creeks come from China, what kind of rosewood or mahogany would they be made of? My rosewood SC D-170 certainly doesn't look like any of the photos above.

Unless you can find out the botanical name you can't tell. Many manufacturers will even use generic names like mahogany and rosewood when the wood is neither. The only names that have any real meaning are the botanical names. If it is actually rosewood the botanical name will start with the Genus name which is Dalbergia and then be followed by the species name which tells you which kind of rosewood it is. For mahogany, the Genus name is Swietenia followed by the species name. Any other Genus names than these means it is some kind of wood other than rosewood or mahogany. It may be a very nice wood and good for making guitars, but it would not be real rosewood or mahogany.

The rosewoods tend to have very different appearances from one log to the next, and sometimes even from one part of a log to another part of a log. Colors range from very pale to to very dark brown. There can be reds and greens and purples mixed in, or not, and grains can be wide or narrow or almost no apparent grain.

Sometimes wood sellers or guitar makers will use a toner or even a stain to make the wood look more appealing - changing the natural look of that particular board.

You also get into quality questions as well. Wood sellers are very savvy about how much they can get for a board and they price the best quality ones very fully and the lower quality ones at a more affordable price.

[airguitarro]

I remember hearing clips of a Matsuda with cambodian rosewood that sounded incredible.

[CoffeeGuitar]

both bruce petros and michi matsuda make some gourgeous instruments out of cambodian rosewood which is by far and away the bets of the asians

the glassiest rosewood imho

[Guitarbench]

Sorry for the quite late reply, I was just replying to another SEA rosewood question and thought I would share:

In addition to barensis and cochenensis, there is also oliveri. Oliveri is a lighter, pink colour on the whole.

The reason why you don't see much of it around is that it is either illegal to log or illegal to export in raw form. Actually a lot of the cochenensis and baroni around is poached from Myanmar and Cambodia and resold in, er, other markets. Mind you a lot of the ebonies from Asia are also traded like that as the trees are technically illegal to harvest in many locations. Deals that go down at night, all kind of shenanigans like selling by weight and soaking cants in water etc etc,

Anyway back to rosewood, in Indian, milling to size is considered value adding (from what I understand) and hence latifolia & sissoo can be exported but in Vietnam for example, a finished product must be exported.

Here is a photo of what I think is baroni from a Hanoi workshop when I was over there a couple of years ago to hunt for wood.